The present invention concerns in-press mounted devices for driving tools by the press motion. Such devices, commonly called “cams”, are used to perform forming operations on portions of workpiece which cannot be done by the press motion directly. Such cams includes a cam slide advanced by the press motion to drive a tool along a direction traverse to the press motion so as to execute an operation on a workpiece in that direction. Such operations typically involve driving a punch to form a hole in the workpiece.
Such press mounted cams are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,487,296 assigned to the same assignee as the present application. Preferred forms of such cams are described in U.S. application Ser. Nos. 11/060,082 filed on Feb. 16, 2005, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,080,542, and 11/069,828 filed on Feb. 28, 2005.
It is necessary that the tool mounted on the cam slide is accurately aligned with the location of the mating tool on the die so that the cam mounted tool properly mates with the tool mounted on the die when the slide is driven towards the die by the press motion.
The tool may be for piercing, trimming, bending, drawing, etc.
This necessitates a tedious time consuming set up process, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,487,296.
Such press mounted cams are comprised of three main components, an adapter body mounted to the upper platen or a die shoe mounted to the upper platen, a slider mounted on the adapter body so as to accommodate sliding movement to drive the tool affixed thereto, and a driver mounted on a lower platen or die shoe mounted thereto.
When the slide engages the driver, further press motion creates a camming action driving the slider in a direction transverse to the press motion, the tool mounted to project from the slide so as, for example, punch a hole in workpiece when the punch is driven through a workpiece section and into the punch die. For piercing, the punch die mates with the punch in use, and so the punch must be properly aligned with the punch die when a hole is being punched.
Since it is impossible due to tolerance build up to install the cam components with sufficient accuracy to align the punch perfectly with the punch die, an in-press adjustment of the tool position must be done. This is complicated by the relative inaccessibility of the tool mounting when the cam components are installed in the press. In the past, this was done by making sideway adjustments and front to back adjustments when installing the driver to move the punch correspondingly into alignment. This in turn required the adapter to be installed later so as to be properly aligned with the driver.
Alternatively, the tool holder can be adjusted when being mounted on the slide, but this requires complete removal of the slide for doweling the tool holder to the slide in its adjusted position since this cannot be done in the die due to difficulty in accessing the cam.
In either event, a tedious time consuming procedure is entailed.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a method and tool mounting for a press mounted cam which reduces the time and effort required to set up a tool in proper alignment.